1. Field
Example embodiments relate to an image processing apparatus of a robot system, which efficiently manages a moving image acquired by a robot and reinforces security to prevent an image from being leaked, and a method and computer-readable medium thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
With remarkable development of robot technology, an intelligent robot is expected to come into wide use in homes and offices in the near future.
Service provided by such an intelligent robot which is attracting much attention includes a security function for monitoring incidents which takes place in and around a house and preventing external invasion. For example, when a user goes out or sleeps, a robot photographs and records an image while patrolling to adequately cope with an external invader or an incident which takes place in a house.
A recorded image is acquired by storing an image photographed by a camera of a robot in a recording medium, and a moving image photographed by the camera needs to be stored for a long period of time.
If a moving image photographed by a robot is stored, a high-performance computer to process large volumes of images is necessary. Accordingly, the size of the robot is increased and a battery to supply sufficient power is secured. In addition, when high-resolution images obtained by a high-performance digital camera which has been rapidly developed are recorded over a long period of time, large volumes of images are stored in correspondence with a photographing time.
As another example, there is a method of connecting a robot to a server over a network, transmitting a photographed image to the server, and storing and managing image information at the server. This method reduces a image processing burden on the robot, but a transmission time is increased due to a network burden because large volumes of moving images are compressed and are transmitted to the server. At the time of image transmission, privacy may be undesirably violated due to image interception or leakage and thus security is weak. In addition, since a plurality of intelligent robots is connected to one server, network load needs to be decreased by decreasing the capacity of information transmitted from a system managed by the server to the server.